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NEW DELHI: 'Virtual call centres' are now the latest alternative to offshoring: Americans dialling for customer service are increasingly being connected to call centre workers sitting in their bedrooms in the US itself. 'Home-shoring', a trend which started as a trickle in the late '90s, is picking up in the US as a low-cost alternative to call centres. According to a report by consulting firm IDC, more than 100,000 US workers field customer service calls from home. Another report by Gartner Inc says over the next two years, one out of every 10 US call centre is likely to shift...

Even by the standards of the Lone Star State, the claim by two Texas researchers -- Douglas C. Burger and Stephen W. Keckler -- can seem a trifle grandiose. "We're reinventing the computer," asserts Keckler. A glance at their backers, though, dispels some of the skepticism. IBM (IBM ) is working closely with the two University of Texas computer scientists. And the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2001 handed them $11 million in development funds. Now, IBM is gearing up to manufacture the first prototype of their concept for a radically new computer-brain chip. If it delivers what...

While Microsoft giant Bill Gates hobnobs with the likes of Earth Charter architects Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong, IBM has jumped into bed with Saddam’s favourite bank, BNP Paribas. Since December 2003, IBM and French bank BNP Paribas have been in a 50-50 partnership in a massive IT operation. IBM provided the technological expertise to create BNP Paribas out of the merger of three banks and now has a subsidiary that it runs with BNP. The giant multinationals have signed up on a giant venture to manage BNP Paribas’s information and technology operations. The deal covers a kind of computing...

IBM and North Carolina's Research Park Triangle are whining and moaning about the paucity of students entering computer science: "With a critical shortage of [IT] workers projected in the coming years, it's crucial that [universities] attract top students to the field, a local IBM official said..." Irony, thy name is IBM. Allow me to quote from another article, dated May 19th: "IBM's headcount in India is inching closer to the 25,000 mark..." Gee, I wonder if IBM's Everest-sized outsourcing effort has dampened the enthusiasm of any would-be computer science majors? ...

HAVANA (AFP) - Cuba will gradually switch to the open-source Linux operating system for its state computers, eliminating its exclusive use of Microsoft Windows, the government daily Juventud Rebelde reported. Roberto del Puerto, director of the state office of information technology, told the daily that Cuba already has about 1,500 computers using the Linux system, a free operating system whose technical data is open for public viewing. Del Puerto said his office was working on a legal framework that would allow the replacement of the Windows system. Although Windows is used on about 90 percent of the world's personal computers,...

IBM is well-known within the semiconductor industry for cutting-edge chips. Its PowerPC chips also are used in the Mars rover vehicles, some of the most sophisticated business workstations and Apple machines. But the game consoles will take IBM chips more mainstream.

Silicon Valley Watcher: Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company. Tom Foremski's report today in Silicon Valley Watcher makes for very interesting reading. He says IBM's plan comes hot on the heels of their Q1/05 financial results, which missed financial analysts' expectations and led to IBM announcing layoffs of up to 13,000 employees, with the majority of those lost jobs in Europe. Also see this ZDNet report with additional commentary. Tom's report says that IBM hopes blogging could...

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- About 1,000 information technology workers throughout the Walt Disney Co. will have their jobs outsourced, but few layoffs are expected. Most workers would be moved into new jobs with two vendors, IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services Inc., after negotiations are completed this month, the company told employees Thursday. The outsourcing is planned to occur in mid-July. About one-third of the division's overall work force would be affected. Some workers may be offered jobs elsewhere at Disney or be laid off, the company told employees, but no numbers were provided. The IT unit handles such...

IBM is encouraging its employees to use Firefox, aiding the open-source Web browser's quest to chip away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox is already used by about 10 percent of IBM's staff, or about 30,000 people. Starting Friday, IBM workers can download the browser from internal servers and get support from the company's help desk staff. IBM's commitment to Firefox is among its most prominent votes of confidence from a large corporation. Based on development work by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, Firefox has been downloaded by more than 50 million people since it debuted in November. Internet Explorer still dominates...

Here's the Todd Shaughnessy affidavit [PDF] from IBM that Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells requested they file when they turned over all the code and paperwork to SCO, which we now find out happened on schedule on March 18.

IBM to Cut Up to 13,000 Jobs, Take Charge Wednesday May 4, 4:29 pm ET IBM to Cut 10,000 to 13,000 Jobs, Record Pre-Tax Charge of Between $1.3 and $1.7 Billion in 2Q NEW YORK (AP) -- International Business Machines Corp. said Wednesday it would cut between 10,000 and 13,000 jobs and record a pre-tax charge of between $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion in the second quarter. IBM surprised investors last month when it missed first-quarter earnings estimates by 5 cents a share. When it reported earnings, the chief financial officer Mark Loughridge said the company would take a "sizable...

Here's IBM's Objections to SCO's Privilege Log[PDF] as text, thanks to Feldegast, who certainly earned a gold star with this thankless task. The detail is a bit overwhelming as it is, so he left the footnotes on the page where they appear, rather than clustering them at the end, as we normally do. I hope it helps. Footnote 1 is interesting, because SCO's privilege logs from November and December of 2004 had 19,207 entries. This one, filed in March, has only 2,998 entries, and IBM has no clue why. So IBM reserves the right to object and to compel...

The City of Munich has selected two local German software companies to equip all 14,000 computers in its public administration with Linux and other open source office applications. Softcon and Gonicus, which submitted a joint bid, were selected to install open source software provided through the Debian GNU/Linux project. The two companies will also provide a range of applications designed specifically for the city administration. Financial details of the deal were not available. The high participation in the public tender to supply software and support for Munich's LiMux open software project showed that Linux on the desktop is no "exotic...

IBM missed big..stock is halyed in After hours trading...they even released earnings 2 days early in a surprise...tech stocks down huge in AH..going to be crash tommrow?

IBM has called for tighter regulation of patents and a review of intellectual property ownership issues in collaborative software development. Big Blue -- one of the largest patent-holders in the United States -- detailed its position at a media event in New York last week. Jim Stallings, vice-president, intellectual property and standards, launched an attack on the current patent process, arguing the methods adopted by the United States Patent office are flawed. "There has been a dramatic increase in the number of filings of patents recently, around the world, but particularly in the United States," Stallings said. "What's happened is...

It's beginning to look like the SCO-IBM case won't make it to the finish line, an end to discovery and summary judgement. SCO's sponsors are blowing up. Literally. Maureen O'Gara (left), whose name is like fingers rubbing a balloon to most in the open source community, and is regularly accused by them of being an SCO shill, reported last month that both Ray Noorda's daughter and another executive with Canopy Group, SCO's largest owner, committed suicide. More telling, perhaps, was her reference to SCO itself, a company she has regularly defended on teleconferences. She called it "the infamous SCO Group."...

IBM has one-upped itself. Big Blue has revealed that it has broken through the 100 teraflop mark and developed the world's fastest supercomputer for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The system is a derivative of IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, which won the supercomputing crown back from NEC's Earth Simulator. The NNSA machine is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

In an appeal that will come as a surprise to no one, IBM has asked the Utah district court hearing the SCO case for more time to comply with the court's January 18 order to turn over most of the discovery SCO's been after for almost two years. IBM asked SCO to agree to the extension but SCO wouldn't, IBM says.The court told IBM to turn the discovery over by today, March 18. IBM wants 45 more days, or until May 3.IBM complains that it's too big a job to do in the 60 days it was given. It was...

Judge Kimball comes through. He has granted IBM their 45-day extension, and he also says they don't have to turn over the materials that are the subject of their Motion for Reconsideration until the court rules on that motion, which is exactly what IBM asked for. They submitted this proposed order. IBM filed its Motion for 45-Day Extension of Time to Comply with 1/18/05 Order on March 9, and SCO filed an Memorandum in Opposition to IBM's Motion for 45-Day Extension of Time to Comply with 1/18/05 Order on March 15, 2005. This order is dated March 16. I take...

The smart IBM boys want to dump their troubles on to, and make better use of, the Chinese, but their bright strategies seem very strange to some politicians in Washington. Now, these politicians raise the big weapon: the national interest.